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Genesis: Flat TVs, Rising Profits

By producing key components, Genesis is leveraged to the growth of flat-panel and high-definition TVs.

In the beginning there was TV. It was black and white and pretty good. Then there was color, and it was much better.

Now there's HDTV, and couch jockeys everywhere may rejoice. You can bet that the folks at Genesis Microchip(NASDAQ:GNSS) are pretty happy, too. They've hitched their growth wagon to the market for flat-panel and high-definition TVs.

The market's reaction to the contrary, the company's third quarter was actually pretty good. Revenue and earnings per share both handily beat estimates. Revenue grew 25% in the quarter, margins improved, and net income increased several times over on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis.

The stock? Oh, it was down almost 10%.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the sell-off was a byproduct of comparatively modest guidance. Yes, management provided a range that pretty much bookended analysts' prior consensus, but given the outperformance in this quarter, I suppose that no longer looks like much of an accomplishment. By the same token, this company has a pretty good record of beating estimates, so I wouldn't be too worried about next quarter.

Selling image-manipulation solutions and interfaces to the TV and monitor markets means that quarterly performance can be a hurry-up-and-wait situation. Genesis competes against the likes of Trident Microsystems(NASDAQ:TRID), ATI Technologies(NASDAQ:ATYT), Zoran(NASDAQ:ZRAN), and Pixelworks(NASDAQ:PXLW) to successfully sell its designs to customers. Then it has to wait for those customers (such as LG, Samsung, and Philips) to order the company's products and sell the resulting TVs. And of course, it's then up to the likes of CircuitCity(NYSE:CC) and Best Buy(NYSE:BBY) to hawk those TVs effectively and make sure everybody realizes they just have to get one.

Fortunately, the TV business is firing on all cylinders right now. Flat-panel TVs are in demand, and the company saw 54% sequential unit growth for that business. What's more, the company has introduced an HDTV decoder that could perhaps multiply the company's per-set revenue potential.

While a lot of these stocks have gotten hit over worries about high energy costs and falling flat-panel prices, the latter may be good news -- the cheaper the sets get, the more buyers will come into the market. Remember, though, that this is a very competitive industry, and these sorts of stocks have a distressing habit of causing heartache when the fads fade. Still, it's tough to ignore an attractive growth play in a fast-growing consumer market.